Review: The Digital Photography Book Volume 3
Scott Kelby's at it again - another volume in his excellent Digital Photography series
| Product | The Digital Photography Book volume 3 |
|---|---|
| Company | Peachpit Press |
| Web | www.peachpit.com |
| Price | From £13.99 |
| We like | Lens and Outdoor sections, accessible tips |
| We don't like | Some filler tips |
| Rating | 8/10 |
| Requirements |
We've previously looked at The Digital Photography Book Volume 1 and The Digital Photography Book Volume 2 and now here's volume 3 so clearly, the author Scott Kelby is on to a good thing - and so are we.
As with previous volumes, this book contains around 200 single page 'recipes' or tips on getting a particular shot or effect right. As the author notes on the cover, he wants it to read like an experienced friend who is by your side as you take pictures. Often, you don't want to read pages and pages of detailed information, you just want to be able to ask 'what can I do if my flash isn't bright enough?' and get a short snappy reply.
This time around, the book has shifted slightly in the type of content. There are now a lot more general snippets of information. This is both useful for many but also leaves an impression that the series might be running out of steam. As an example, typical pages now have titles like 'How to Clean a Lens', 'Get a Model Release' and 'Make Sure you Have the Latest Firmware'. To be sure, these are all useful but it's still a change to the overall feel.
The section titles give a good feel for the scope - 'Using Flash Like a Pro - Part 2' (see the previous book for part 1), 'Shooting Products like a Pro', 'Shooting People like a Pro' (means something different to photographers, nothing here for hit men), 'The truth about Lenses' and 'Avoiding Problems like a Pro'.
Within each of these is 25 or so tips. As before, each tip consists of a photo or two and a paragraph of text. Some have an additional highlighted box with an additional nugget of wisdom. Scott's style of prose is very readable and should appeal to a wide range of readers across a variety of skill levels.
We felt the balance of volume 3 was more towards people wanting to take photos commercially. If you've worked your way through volumes 1 and 2 that is probably no bad thing though. We particularly enjoyed the section on lenses which explained that teleconvertors don't work with all lenses and that you should remove UV filters when shooting at night - not the sort of stuff you'll easily find elsewhere. Also good was the section on outdoors photography, especially the notes on using clouds to hold the colour of a scene and rather cheekily, taking photos of postcards on the rack to give a feel for an area's highlights.
Our only real concern overall with The Digital Photography Book Volume 3 is that some of the pages felt like filler such as deleting bad shots from your card as you go along. Every photographer is different though and one persons filler may be another ones most useful tip so that's perhaps a subjective point.
Conclusion
We really liked the first two books in this series and by and large, volume three continues the tradition of excellent yet concise help for the photographer. The format works well and the print quality ensures the images do genuinely help the reader understand what's going on. We do feel the series has moved away slightly from its roots as a guide for keen amateur and has perhaps reduced its audience accordingly but given the low price we are still happy to recommend this title for anyone who wants to make the best of their camera and sharpen their skills as well as their photos. At the time of writing, Amazon are doing a particularly good deal on The Digital Photography Book Volume 3 so click on the link!
